Quality Discussion/Interaction</li></ul>Mentioned in news publications<br
/>Forum discussions link to its pages<br />People email links to each other<br />Links are Tweeted<br />Liked/Shared on Facebook<br />Cited at conferences + events<br />Sometimes, a single piece of content or just a few, can yield these results but, more often, it takes dozens to hundreds of attempts to become a resource hub.<br />http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html<br />

Substantive, Descriptive, HTML Text Content<br
/>http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html<br />http://www.hipmunk.com/ is a great site, but there’s no real text content for engines to see! http://adioso.com doesn’t have a ton more, but there’s at least something for Google/Bing to grab onto.<br />

Google’s “Cached Snapshot” is a
Great Way to Check<br />http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html<br />Using the “Cached” link on any search result, you can see what Google’s seen.<br />

Preferably All on a Single
Sub/Root Domain<br />http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html<br />http://www.seomoz.org/blog/understanding-root-domains-subdomains-vs-subfolders-microsites<br />

Panda/Farmer Update was a First
Step<br />Generic design is one of the features highly correlated with lost traffic in Panda/Farmer. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/googles-farmer-update-analysis-of-winners-vs-losers<br />http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html<br />

Great Design is Surprisingly Easy
& Affordable<br />http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html<br />Using the search query “CSS Gallery” will bring up tons of sites like http://www.cssbeauty.com/gallery/<br />

Buying PPC is a Great
Way to Test<br />How do these visitors perform?<br />http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html<br />Just be aware that PPC behavior isn’t always the same as organic click behavior<br />

Put the Data Together and
Start with Low-Hanging Fruit<br />http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html<br />I like to use heat indices based on estimated value: Excel can do this automatically<br />

Keywords in the URL Help,
Too<br />Better<br />www.adioso.com/seattle/british-airways-flights<br />www.adioso.com/cat61/british<br />www.adioso.com/cat61/174<br />www.adioso.com/f?ID=174<br />www.adioso.com/f?cat=61&?ID=174<br />Worse<br />cdn6.fly.adioso.com/f?cat=61&?ID=174&CustID=5afsdf21<br />http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html<br />Not only is there direct benefit, but people who link using the URL will pass good anchor text, too<br />

Meta Keywords?<br />The search engines
don’t use these at all (and haven’t since the early 2000s)<br />http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html<br />http://searchengineland.com/meta-keywords-tag-101-how-to-legally-hide-words-on-your-pages-for-search-engines-12099<br />

Body Text Keyword Usage<br />Not
only do search engines like to see keywords in copy, but visitors will be comforted to see that you have content that addresses their query, too.<br />http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html<br />

H1, H2, H3 Headlines<br />Keywords
in H(x) tags are not particularly well correlated with high rankings, but may provide some, minor value.<br />http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html<br />http://www.htmlcodetutorial.com/_H35n.html<br />

Ahh… The Power of Links<br
/>http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html<br />http://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-vs-bing-correlation-analysis-of-ranking-elements<br />

What Makes a Great Link?<br
/>Editorially given<br />From a trusted source<br />Uses descriptive anchor text<br />Points to the right page<br />http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html<br />http://www.seomoz.org/blog/10-illustrations-on-search-engines-valuation-of-links<br />

Google + Bing Now Counting
Facebook & Twitter<br />Danny Sullivan: If an article is retweeted or referenced much in Twitter, do you count that as a signal outside of finding any non-nofollowed links that may naturally result from it?<br />Google: Yes, we do use it as a signal. It is used as a signal in our organic and news rankings. We also use it to enhance our news universal by marking how many people shared an article <br />http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html<br />http://searchengineland.com/what-social-signals-do-google-bing-really-count-55389<br />

Why Do People Link/Tweet/Share?<br />Many
of these blogs will use the badge and link to the list, because it makes them look good!<br />http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html<br />http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-emotions-that-make-us-link<br />

Key SEO Metric #1:Visits /
Search Engine<br />These ones here!<br />http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html<br />This tells you how many searches resulted in a click on your site in the results<br />

More Traffic<br />Home Page<br />List
of Cheeses<br />Hours + Directions<br />15%<br />10%<br />More visits to the home page means more people will decide to visit<br />http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html<br />It’s a lot of hard work to get more visits, though, and we don’t know if they’ll be the kind who love cheese!<br />

A Better Funnel<br />Home Page<br
/>List of Cheeses<br />Hours + Directions<br />25%<br />20%<br />A better “conversion rate” means more people who already visit the site will come to the store!<br />http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html<br />Woo hoo! Now for every 1,000 people that visit the site, 25 are potential cheese buyers!<br />